December 16th I woke up early, got ready and went to the hotel breakfast that was included with my stay. I then walked about 10 minutes to the meeting place for the tour I had booked for the day. I had a 5 hour tour out to Terezín.
Terezín is a Concentration Camp, but it turns out it's more complicated than that, so I'll do my best to explain it here. Prior to visiting Terezín what I knew about it was that this was the camp the Nazi Regime used for propaganda to convince the International Red Cross and the world that they weren't really doing anything bad to the Jews. I hoped to learn more about how they did that.
Terezín Memorial is really many different sights. We only made 3 of the stops. The first thing we saw was the National Cemetery. This is located in front of the Small Fortress. It includes individual and mass graves of 10,000 victims of the Gestapo police prison, the Terezín ghetto, the concentration camp in Litoměřice, and the death transports from Lovosice. A lot of the people buried here also died after the camp liberations of a Typhus outbreak due to the camp conditions.
As mentioned, this is located in front of what is known as the Small Fortress. This part of the Terezín Memorial served as an actual fortress from the 18th century. Then it served as a prison during the Habsburg Monarchy. During WW2, it was used as a police prison by the Prague Gestapo for opponents of the Nazi regime.
The first part of the Small Fortress that we visited was the Administrative Courtyard.
Rooms used for solitary confinement
This room was used for non-Jewish prisoners.
During the Habsburg era, this is where Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, was imprisoned.
Started WW1. Died in this prison cell.
While this was a Gestapo prison, it did house Jews before they were transported on to other extermination camps. I forget how many people they told us would be crammed into this one small room. They said there were so many that the only way they would fit was standing up. They would have to continue to move in circles to try to get near the window to get a breath of air. Many suffocated in here. If you sat down or had to lay down, you would be trampled. Just horrific.
This is a machine that disinfected clothing of lice, etc. Inmates would put their clothes in here before showering. Unfortunately their clothes would be wet when they had to put them back on . On a cold day like we had on this visit you could imagine how unbearable that would be.
The showers
This is some of the propaganda. This room was filled with sinks and mirrors. It has not been touched since WW2. This was shown to the International Red Cross as proof that people were able to take care of their hygiene needs. BUT the sinks are not plumbed! There is literally no water running to the sinks!
This swimming pool was dug by prisoners. It was used by the Nazi families who lived there. It was also used as propaganda. They made it seem like this was a summer camp and that Jews could use the pool.
Another portion of the Small Fortress we visited is known as the Fourth Courtyard. This was the only portion that the Nazi regime actually built themselves.
They told us that this room would house 500 prisoners.
The next stop we made was to the Ghetto. Terezín itself was an actual city, but the Nazi regime forced the citizens there to leave so that they could turn the city into a Jewish Ghetto. They'd move many Jews from Nazi occupied areas here before moving them on to extermination camps like Auschwitz.
People were assigned to barracks. Men and women were separated into different barracks, so this green space would be where families could occasionally be reunited for a short time.
We visited the Ghetto Museum which is in a building that housed Jewish boys from ages 10-15.
The museum has a history of the Terezín ghetto and the persecution of Jews in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Part of the museum is dedicated to the youngest victims. There were a lot of drawings that the children made. There was a nameplate on all of these with info about the child. Every single one of these drawings were drawn by children sent to Auschwitz to be murdered.
These were drawings that children drew of their memories of home.
There was a room that had names engraved on the walls. This was info card about it.
The last stop my tour made was to the Crematorium.
There was also a cemetery next to it.
The crematorium was built because of the high death rate. They cremated 30,000 people here from the autumn of 1942.
A preserved autopsy room. Since this wasn't an extermination camp, they would evaluate and record what caused the death of people here.
A four oven crematorium.
These ovens were oil fueled and you can see on the top right one of the barrels.
That was the last stop on the tour and we took the tour bus back to Prague. The traffic was terrible once we got near old town, so the bus ended up letting us just get off because we could walk faster.
I made a trip back to "Fred". I got another one of their chocolate chip brioche (These are the best!) to save for breakfast the next day, another one of the treats to take for dessert later in the evening...
...and enjoyed a hot chocolate and brioche there.
I enjoyed a rest and warm-up there.
Then I walked around old town a little more.
The Spanish synagogue.
Franz Kafka statue
And then I hit the fancy shops again where I did in fact buy the Burberry sunglasses.
After a stop back at my hotel, I headed out for the evening and walked to Wenceslas Square.
I ended up back in old town and walked around that market. I grabbed dinner there and then enjoyed a tea from starbucks with my Fred dessert while I iced my knee back in the room.
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